Too cheesy for K-Mart and Sears?

I can’t understand the problem, though. I mean, what K-Mart shopper wouldn’t want a $567.45 Trump Lamp? Look how classy it is. That is the best lamp. The greatest! Definitely worth half a grand. Donald probably has one exactly like it, except that his is covered in gold.

Ahem, I have seen ten times prettier and more original lamps being whittled out of a piece of wood by hobbyists, and then being sold at tenth of the price. I mean, how much work could this be for a skilled worker – fifteen minutes on lathe, ten minutes lacquering and ten minutes wiring.

I am truly amazed that people exist who think that slapping Trump’s name on something that Trump knows nothing about increases its value by several fold. Even if Trump were actually a good businessman and had decent taste, neither of which is remotely true, that still wouldn’t make him an expert on lamps.

That particular example would actually take more time than you suggest, if it were made from a single piece of wood rather than a block and a stem glued together. But it’s still no more than an easy afternoon’s work, and less than twenty quid’s worth of materials.

Just goes to show how much you can fuck people over if you have a famous name. Most of those who bought the damn things won’t even have realised they were being scammed.

Based on the shape I hypothesize the lampstand is actually filled with expensive wine, which would explain both the price and the unimaginative yet functional design.
Consider this: the average eccentric rich person must have something rare and expensive (not to mention, alcoholic) to quench their thirst. They also live with the expectation that, upon their first angry shout, a butler should instantly materialise at their side, bearing a glass and a bottle filled with something at least a century old. Of course this doesn’t always work out, so our eccentric moneybag will soon resort to throwing furniture around until their wishes are fulfilled.
Now the clever part: A lamp is an obvious choice for hurling, so it goes first. It breaks and out comes … precious booze! Thus the immediate needs of our boiling blueblood are met with only minimal damage, buying the butler the time he needs to jimmy open the liquor cabinet. Naturally the master jealously protects his drinks cabniet for fear of theft, which is what caused the fatal delay in the first place.

As for how such a lamp would end up in the consumer market? Classic rich-people thinking: “I want to sell something. What is it that regular people like myself really need?”

Donald probably has one exactly like it, except that his is covered in gold.

Surely you mean gold paint?
Excerpt:Some thought his asking price ludicrous. Lambiet, a former Palm Beach Post reporter who now publishes the local blog GossipExtra, noticed flaws and shortcuts during a personal tour Trump gave of the property in 2007. Trump, for instance, boasted that he’d installed gold fixtures in the bathrooms. But when Lambiet scratched a faucet, he found gold paint under his fingernails.

@Rich Woods
You woodworker too? You are right, of course, I was being facetious

It would be more time if made from one piece of wood, agreed, because you would have to take away a lot of material. However when you click on the picture, you see badly disguised glue lines. and those are straight glue lines, not much fitting had to be done. So it was probably glued together in rough shape and then finished on lathe.

But one hour was probably too little. However four hours (or, like you said, one afternoon) tops.

It is probably not even some rare wood. Hard to say from this picture, but it looks like some mass-produced cheapo tropical wood (probably teak), and not even a massif at that, but glued cutt-ofs. I do not think it is high quality non-tropical hardwood like oak, walnut or elm (maybe the little ring on bottom is rare wood, but it might be just paint), but I might be mistaken, pictures can be deceiving.

In concluseion, If I were to guess where the wood worker who has done this lives, it would be somewhere around Bangladesh/India/Sri Lanka. What I would not guess is “made in USA from USA produced materials”.

My dad taught me how to turn wood, but as much as I enjoyed it I’ve never lived anywhere since with enough room for a lathe. I’m decades away from having had any consistent practice; the last thing I made was a handful of pens several years ago. By that point my dad had progressed to making objects with stems comprising multiple interleaved helixes — I couldn’t even begin to work out he’d done it! He carried on working until a month before his death. He won prizes at his local club for many of his commissions, and I’ve got quite a few of his pieces displayed around my house. I value those reminders of him as much as any family photos.

You’re right about the glue lines on that lamp. If they’re intended to suggest offsets around a bulb it fails pretty miserably.